THE GREAT THICK-SKINNED ANIMALS 159 



leaves, and so on, are picked up by the little finger and thumb-like 

 projections about which I told you, while larger objects are grasped 

 by the trunk itself. I dare say that you have seen an elephant pick 

 up and eat a biscuit; and, if so, you will very well remember the man- 

 ner in which the trunk carried food to the mouth. 



So useful, indeed, is the trunk, that if deprived of its aid, even 

 for a few days only, the elephant would certainly die. His neck is 

 so short that he could obtain neither food or drink, for he could not 

 bend his head to the ground and so procure water, while his long 

 tusks would prevent him from even plucking the leaves which might 

 grow within his reach. 



I dare say you will wonder why it is that the neck should be so 

 short and stout. The fact is, that the head, with the teeth and the 

 enormous tusks, is so immensely heavy, that the neck must be very 

 large in order to contain the powerful muscles which are needed to 

 sustain it. This accounts for its great size, and we may also see with 

 equal ease, the reason for its shortness by trying a single experiment. 

 Mud-Bathers — Elephants. — Nearly every tropical animal, 

 including the tiger, bathes either in water or in mud. Perhaps the 

 best-known mud-bathers are the wild boar, the water-bufifalo, and the 

 elephant. The latter has an immense advantage over all other 

 animals, in the use of its trunk for dressing wounds. It is at once a 

 syringe, a powdering-puff and a hand. Water, mud, and dust are 

 the main "applications" used, though it sometimes covers a sun- 

 scorched back with grass or leaves. "Wounded elephants," writes 

 an African explorer, "have marvelous power of recovery when in their 

 wild state, although they have no gifts of surgical knowledge, their 

 simple system being confined to plastering their wounds with mud, or 

 blowing dust upon the surface. Dust and mud comprise the entire 

 pharmacopoeia of the elephant, and this is applied upon the most 

 trivial as well as upon the most serious occasions. I have seen them 

 when in a tank plaster up a bullet wound with mud taken from the 

 bottom." 



How AN Elephant Pays Back. — A' tame elephant, kept by an 

 officer in India, was suffered to go at large. The animal used to walk 

 about the streets in as quiet and familiar a manner as any of the 



